The degradation behavior of silk fibroin biomaterials in human body is definitely vital for the growth of tissues. Therefore, an investigation to regulate the degradation behaviors of silk fibroin films by changing the degree of cross-linking is presented in this paper. The in-vitro experiments in the simulated human body environment showed that the degradation rate of cross-linked silk fibroin...

Membranes prepared from a protein, fibroin, isolated from domesticated silkworm (Bombyx mori) silk, support the cultivation of human limbal epithelial (HLE) cells and thus display significant potential as biomaterials for ocular surface reconstruction. We presently extend this promising avenue of research by directly comparing the attachment, morphology and phenotype of primary HLE cell culture...

Silk fibroin, produced by the silkworm Bombyx mori, has been widely studied as a scaffold in tissue engineering. Although it has been shown to be slowly biodegradable, cellular responses to degraded silk fibroin fragments are largely unknown. In this study, silk fibroin was added to MG-63 cell cultures, and changes in gene expression in the MG-63 cells were screened by DNA microarray analysis. ...

The formation and properties of lepidopteran silk fibers depend on amino acid repeats in the principal protein, heavy chain fibroin (H-fibroin). In H-fibroins of the "bombycoid" type, concatenations of alanine or of the GAGAGS crystalline motifs (1st tier repeats) and adjacent sequences breaking periodicity make 2nd tier repeats. Two to six such repeats comprise a 3rd tier assembly, and 12 asse...

Hydrogels are three-dimensional polymer networks widely used in biomedical applications as drug delivery and tissue engineered scaffolds to effectively repair or replace damaged tissue. In this paper we demonstrate a newly synthesized cytocompatible and drug releasing photo-crosslinked hydrogel based on poly(vinyl alcohol) methacrylate and silk fibroin which possesses tailorable structural and ...

Fibroin is normally composed of one H chain (350 kd) and one L chain (25 kd) which are connected by disulfide bond(s). However, the small amount of fibroin secreted into the lumen of the posterior silk gland of the Nd(2) (naked pupa) mutant does not contain L chain, although L chain mRNA is present and L chain is synthesized in the posterior silk gland cells of the mutant. In a hybrid silkworm,...

Biopolymers, such as silk fibroin, collagen, and chitosan, are promising candidates for a variety of applications that merge the fields of biomedical optics and biomaterials. Biocompatible silk fibroin, in particular, shows promise as a biomaterial, based on a number of attributes. Silk fibroin is the strongest and toughest natural fiber known and is easily formed into robust films of thermodyn...

The regeneration of structural biopolymers into micelles or nanoparticles suspended in water has enabled the design of new materials with unique and compelling properties that can serve at the interface between the biotic and the abiotic worlds. In this study, we leveraged silk fibroin quintessential properties (i.e. polymorphism, conformability and hydrophobicity) to design a water-based prote...

Regenerated silk fibroin has been proposed as a material substrate for biomedical, optical, and electronic applications. Preparation of the silk fibroin solution requires extraction (degumming) to remove contaminants, but results in the degradation of the fibroin protein. Here, a mechanism of fibroin degradation is proposed and the molecular weight and polydispersity is characterized as a funct...

Silk fibroin has attracted great interest in tissue engineering because of its outstanding biocompatibility, biodegradability and minimal inflammatory reaction. In this study, two kinds of biocomposites based on regenerated silk fibroin are fabricated by electrospinning and post-treatment processes, respectively. Firstly, regenerated silk fibroin/tetramethoxysilane (TMOS) hybrid nanofibers with...